TOP STORY

Cash for Clunkers: Here’s What You Can Get

"They’re here: At last, the Transportation Department has published the rules for the cash-for-clunkers program which gives drivers of old cars a cash incentive to trade up for a newer, more fuel-efficient vehicle.  The basics: What old cars qualify? What can you get? How much do you get?"  [Wall Street Journal]

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Is the Sun Missing Its Spots?

"Ever since Samuel Heinrich Schwabe...first noted in 1843 that sunspots burgeon and wane over a roughly 11-year cycle, scientists have carefully watched the Sun’s activity. In the latest lull, the Sun should have reached its calmest, least pockmarked state last fall. Indeed, last year marked the blankest year of the Sun in the last half-century — 266 days with not a single sunspot visible from Earth. Then, in the first four months of 2009, the Sun became even more blank, the pace of sunspots slowing more. 'It’s been as dead as a doornail,' David Hathaway, a solar physicist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center."  [New York Times]

Back To a Dusty Future

"DURING the Depression of the 1930s, drought turned much of Alberta and Saskatchewan, on Canada’s western prairies, into a dust bowl. The combination of poor harvests and low grain prices drove thousands of farmers off the land. Now some prairie dwellers reckon history is repeating itself...A huge swathe of farmland spanning central Saskatchewan and Alberta, and angling northwest into British Columbia’s Peace River valley has suffered its driest winter and spring in at least 50 years (and 70 in some districts). Rainfall has been less than 40% of its normal level...Worse, such conditions may become the norm." [The Economist]

Peeling Back Pavement to Expose Watery Havens

"For half a century, a dark tunnel of crumbling concrete encased more than three miles of a placid stream bisecting [Seoul]...Today, after a $384 million recovery project, the stream, called Cheonggyecheon, is liberated from its dank sheath and burbles between reedy banks. Picnickers cool their bare feet in its filtered water, and carp swim in its tranquil pools.  The restoration of the Cheonggyecheon is part of an expanding environmental effort in cities around the world to “daylight” rivers and streams by peeling back pavement that was built to bolster commerce and serve automobile traffic decades ago." [New York Times]

Harvesting Clean Energy Along the Road

"A few states are already dabbling in roadside energy production. Last year, Oregon began a “solar highway” demonstration project with a 104-kilowatt ground-mounted solar array situated at the interchange of Interstates 5 and 205...Researchers and designers are also toying with ways to generate power along roads, including the use of piezoelectric materials, energy producing speed bumps and integrating wind turbines into road barriers." [Green, Inc. - New York Times]